The fact that trend following strategies are becoming less effective could be interpreted as a positive thing implying that markets are becoming more efficient, as trend following shouldn't work in a completely efficient market.
Trend following strategies are pure market followers and are not based on fundamentals, therefore they do not bring any new information into markets and are unlikely to improve the efficiency of a market.
My understanding is that CTA is a general term for a hedge fund that uses trend following strategies, primarily trading futures, but not actually restricted to commodities, so it's not a particularly accurate name, just industry jargon.
This seems too good to be true. If they could actually predict football results with better-than-random accuracy, then why wouldn't they just use this themselves to make loads of money on betting markets?
Why is the fact that it's not self-governing relevant to the article? If the violence statistics cited apply to the (country/nation/administrative region/chunk of land) that is England, then surely that's all that matters.